So, I have a little pet peeve. It's when people can't use proper grammar, or don't have basic math skills. Like those who don't use your/you're, there/their/they're, or to/too correctly. Or, what about apostrophes? Apostrophe s shows ownership, while just s makes a word plural. And sales clerks? Most can't make change with out the register telling them how much to give back. And forget about having your change counted back to you properly ~ you'll get it in one fistful.
I wonder sometimes why people don't have these basic skills. Basic knowledge they should have learned in school. Kids are graduating without knowing how to communicate properly in our own language, and without basic arithmetic skills. This is a scary trend.
I don't blame the teachers. They do what they can with what they have. They are overworked and underpaid. But, the product they are turning out is by and large not equipped to be the next generation of leadership for our society.
When it came time for my oldest to begin school, I enrolled her in kindergarten. I was excited for her to begin this new journey of making new friends, having new experiences, and gaining all the new knowledge that going to school entailed. She had had two years of preschool and I felt she was ready to hit the ground running, so to speak. Turns out, she was way advanced compared to all her other class mates, and the advantage that she had was gone by the end of first grade. She had gone from being advanced to being average. Not only that, but she began to exhibit undesirable behaviors. She came home almost every day upset about something, and she would keep all her frustrations bottled up and unleash them when she got home on her unsuspecting sisters. Now, I could have accepted that. I could have kept her in school and let her be average, tolerated all the undesirable behaviors, let her continue to bottle up her frustrations, and enroll my two younger daughters when the time came. But, I did not want that for them. I was also not too keen on having other people teach her values and morals, especially when they may not align with the values and morals my husband and I have.
As a parent we have to look at what the future holds, or what we think it may hold, and equip our children as best as we can so that they may be productive members of society ~ not those who expect to be taken care of. For us, this means homeschooling. As a parent, I feel that this is going to give my daughters the best chance to succeed. Do I think that all children who go to public school will not be productive members of society? No. I am sure that there are exceptional public schools out there. However, by homeschooling, we are ensuring that they will be properly educated. They will know how to use their/there/they're properly. But most importantly, we are not shipping them off, day after day, to have other people shape their character. We are taking the ultimate responsibility in their upbringing, and I feel that they will be better for it.
